Flashback

Ace ran around the playroom way too large for himself, playing with his toys. It was filled to the brim with things straight from a child’s imagination. A built-in bookshelf, filled with boys from the ceiling to the wall. An indoor slide leading down to a ball pit. A custom built rocking horse and a playmat with the english, german and french alphabet. It was a wonderland. 

Ace’s mother watched him run around, sewing a pair of his pants as her eyes followed him. He made sure to stop every so often to look back and make sure she was still there with him. Sometimes she would disappear from sight, without a word, leaving him all alone in his wonderland. 

Mother and son looked up when a man entered the room, barely sparing the mother a glance before giving the son a small upturn of his lip, his own version of a smile.

“Hallo Papa”, the boy waved to him. 

 The man walked in, nodding to his son who happily went back to playing. His wife watched him closely, gripping the sewing needle, an action her husband eyed closely. Men in suits stepped into the room, standing still and waiting for instructions from the man. He pointed at his wife. She scrambled onto her knees, reaching for her son. Their son jumped as his father shouted at her in German and watched as the men in suits walked up to yank her up. Pulling on her dress, her arms and hoisting her legs up, she wailed for her son, trying to throw an arm out to him through the wall of men. He didn’t move, clutching his stuffed bunny to his chest and looking to his father who simply watched the men drag his wife out. 

She pleaded with the men, reaching for her son with tears dripping down her face. She pleaded with her husband as she was dragged by him.

Her husband walked past her, to his son, without a glance to her. The man said something to his son, but his words were drowned out by the crying echoing in the house. Ace sat on the back of his heels, trying to look around his father to see her but the man stepped to the side, completely blocking her from view.He managed to get a peek of a priest between his father’s legs. The man was in the foyer, saying a prayer over his mother. 

“William”, he looks up when his father reaches for him. 

He allows himself to be lifted up into his father’s arms and held close to the man’s chest. His father doesn’t look at him, carrying him out to the priest. From over his father’s shoulder, he can see his mother dragging her feet on the floor as she is carried to the open front door. She looks back at him, the two locking eyes.

“Ace!”. 

She makes a fist with her hand, lifting it up and jabbing the neck of the nearest man. He yells out in shock, nearly dropping her. The front door is shut by one of the servants, preventing Ace from seeing her but not from hearing the shouting.

The Priest steps into his view, saying a prayer and symbolizing a cross over him with his outstretched fingers. He buries his head in his father’s shoulder, letting out his tears in silence.

He feels bad for not helping his mother, especially since she helps him all the time. When there are monsters under his bed and his father tells him to go to sleep through clenched teeth. When he falls down from the stairs. When father sends him away from the table and she sneaks him some food in bed. 

Maman was always there for me and I left her to fight those men on her own. 

End of flashback

“William!”, the young man in question looks up, “we need the fucking refill for the ice cream shake thing! Wake up!”.

Ace looks to the side, curling in on himself. Cody is always an intimidating figure.

“Sorry”, he mumbles. 

“William,” Cody places a hand on William’s shoulder to get him to look at him, “I know you’ve been going through something lately, you’ve been” he looks away, making a circle motions with his hands, “moping around a lot” he looks back up, “But the owner is coming to see if we are up to health standards so we can start renovations”.

He smiles wider.

“More money comes with the renovations. More money means bonuses for us”, he leans in “you better not fuck this up for me man. I don’t have time to work extra hours or get an extra job. I need this bonus to update my PC build, buy my girlfriend a 300 dollar bag so she stops bitching and I can finally fuck her and then leave her and then finish this college class so my parents will get off my ass. I don’t have time for you to fuck up, okay?”. 

Ace leaned away more and more as Cody went on, staring at the floor. 

“Yeah”, he mumbled.

“Good. Now pass me the fucking strawberry base”.

Ace turns around to pick it up and hand it over, making sure to keep his eyes on the ground the whole time. 

“You’re welcome”, he says into his collar but his coworker is already turning to leave. 

He watches the door close with a slam, waiting a few moments before leaving the room.He gets called for a break as soon as the door closes behind him. He hopes no one is in the breakroom as he heads for it. 

Before he gets to the room he can hear the booming voices spilling out of the room, shutting down his hopes. The voices quiet down when he opens the door and don’t start back up immediately. Instead they begin their poor attempt of whispering. Turning their conversation to a more gossip topic. Ace himself. 

Ace ignores them. Opening his locker to get his lunch. He sits at one of the clean tables.

The door opens a second time and the voices stop again. It’s the manager, who sends a look at the group that sends them scrambling. The room is replaced by the sounds of chairs scraping on the floor. Most of them don’t make eye contact, dodging by the man except for two trouble makers. The Manger glares at their smiles.

The door slam shut as he steps into the room, the Manager gives the room a critical eye, frowning at the messy tables. He walks up to where Ace is seated and drops a packet in front of him. 

“You're being fired. Tell your dad not to call me, I have enough on my plate”.

He turns to leave while Ace stares at it blankly. 

“You don’t have to come back tomorrow, it’s effective immediately”. 

He leaves without another word, eyeing the two that remained in the room from the group.

Ace’s eyes skim the packet and the two on the other side pick back up with their gossip. They stop again briefly when Ace drops the packet and they start up when he starts eating. No cussing in anger, no tears, no slamming things down. 

“It’s almost like he’s an emotionless robot”, one girl poorly whispers to her friend.

“Not like,” he leans down to whisper better than her, “ he is ”. 

Ace tunes them out. The quicker he finishes the quicker he can leave. Cleaning out his locker doesn’t take long. There isn’t much in it. He doesn’t have anyone that stops and says bye as he heads out. Not that he expected them to. 

On the walk home, Ace gets a call. His father’s picture flashes on his phone. He lifts up the phone to his ear, waiting for the same lecture. 

“You got fired”, his father starts. 

Ace’s eyes wander. 

“Yes”.  

The sky is a bleak gray that day.

“That’s all?”. The usual anger in his father’s tone is easy enough for him to tune out by now.

“I got fired, Papa”. 

“I don’t need for you to repeat to me what I already know William”, his father snaps.

“I got you this job after the last and this time you’re fired after a month. This job is easy for imbeciles and yet you lose it by doing what exactly?”.

Ace eyes the cars driving by, half listening.

“Silent as always. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I keep getting you easy jobs to keep yourself occupied since you lack the ambition to do it yourself and yet you lack even the decency to make yourself do basic things or anything to appear normal. I’m at my wits end with this- whatever it is you seem to have. Yet another thing you get from that woman”.

Now Ace speaks up. 

“That woman is my maman”.

Movement up above catches Ace’s attention. A dark figure with glowing white eyes. On the top of a building.

“Unfortunately she is. She is partly to blame but she has been out of your life for years, the blame now lies solely with you—”, his father’s voice blurs into the background as Ace eyes the figure up on the roof.

It jumps from roof to roof, keeping its eyes locked with Ace’s the whole time. 

It landed on a light pole, wrapping its snake-like arms around it to stay upright. 

It blinks slowly at him. 

Ace becomes aware of his father calling his name. 

“I’m still here”. 

There is a moment of silence before his father speaks again. 

“I’ll call back when I’ve calmed down. For your sake and mine”.

Ace looks back at the light pole and sees the figure disappearing into an alley, still keeping him in its line of sight. 

He looks away from the figure, focusing on walking home. 

Home is a small place. A sad and mostly barren one bed apartment. He eyed the many boxes stuffed on top of each other, dust and cobwebs covered them. They held his mother’s belongings, things his father had wanted to burn. Things she would have loved to keep. He had buried them in the yard and took them with him when he left. They were now his keepsakes, until he could give them back to her.  The place was bare of any personal touches otherwise. Nothing else mattered. 

After taking a few minutes to clear away the dust from the boxes, he  made a beeline for the kitchen, opened a cabinet and pulled out a pill bottle. He glanced up from the bottle to look down the hall toward his room, contemplating. He set it down on the counter, staring at it. A knife sticking out of the sink brought back a memory. 

Bloodied arms and hands. Shouting. Someone banging on the door. Crying. He reached up to cover his ears as the memory became more clear. His bloody hands holding a knife away from his mother, sitting in the shower with her, his wet pajamas sticking to his skin as she washed away blood from her arms. The banging got louder but he was scared to get up and leave her side, even for a moment to open the door. 

His hands blindly reached for the bottle, taking off the cap and throwing back 2 pills. 

He takes it with him to his room, placing it on the bed table, still open. Stripping down to his boxers, he flops down onto his bed. The memory comes back to him again as he stares at the ceiling, he falls asleep with the image of his father breaking down the door fresh in his mind. 

In the dead of sleep, Ace can feel something off. Something that wakes him up even if he doesn’t know what it is. He’s still in between sleep and being awake but he listens out for what that something is. Then it becomes clear, someone is shouting. Ace opened his eyes, and looked for his clock.

10:33 p.m. 

He forces himself up into a sitting position and stares at the wall. 

The shouts get louder.

He wrangles himself out of the blankets and to the kitchen sink. He rinses off one of the glasses in the sink and turns the cold water on. 

Ace turns his head to the door as the screams get louder. One of his neighbors arguing is a common occurrence. But not like this. He ignores the argument, raising the glass to inspect it, there’s something on the rim/in the bottom. He sighs and dumps the water, reaching for the brown rag he shakes his head and — gunshots ring out. 

Ace drops to the floor. The glass clatters in the sink, echoing.

Everything is silent for a while. 

Ace drags crawls to the front door on his stomach, ignoring the voice in his head telling him to stop. 

He makes it to the window and forces himself up to his knees, pulling the curtain back. He slowly looks around before he sees a figure out of the corner of his eye. A disheveled man comes into view, stopping just outside his window to count money. The overhead light illuminates the area, showing off the blood on the man. The man lifts his shirt to jam a gun into his pants pocket and he locks eyes with Ace. They stare at each other for what feels like forever before they both run away. 

Ace drops to his knees, slamming his body down and putting his hands over his head. His  face bounces against the hard floor but he ignores the pain. The sound of footsteps quickly faded away. That doesn’t get him to move from where he is.  The pounding in his head grows as his vision starts to blur and his breathing gets shaky. He doesn’t know how long he remains like that, the next thing he becomes aware of is red and blue lights blaring through the curtains. 

He takes a deep breath in and sits up on his knees.

He can feel something coming and his body tenses up again. Peering out the window he waits. 

Something bangs on the wall. He jerks around to stare at it. A person falls through the wall. An old man, with a bloodied shirt and pants. 

Despite the situation he finds himself in, Ace relaxes a bit, staring at the man. He knows this man. 

The man looks around the small apartment, falling to his knees crying. 

“Mr. Wilson?”.

The old man looks up in shock. 

“William?”

“It’s Ace, Sir”.

The old man sucks in a breath, through the sobs.

“You can hear me? But no one else can”.

The old man reaches for him.

“Please! Please Ace! Help my son. Before the police get to him. He’s a good boy, he’s just caught up in some bad things, he’s going through a tough time. What he did– it was an accident– he needed money but I don’t have any more to give. It’s- it’s for my granddaughter, she needs it! But then he- he - my granddaughter saw him and he needs to get better for her but the cops are gonna-”. 

The old man becomes hysterical, please being the only word Ace is able to understand. 

Ace looks away from the sight before him. Something begins to eat away at him. Almost like a chokehold.

He hears words, words from someone he hasn’t heard in a while.

You have a special gift, baby.

“I’ll help you Mr. Wilson”.

He doesn’t believe the words as soon as they leave his mouth. 

The old man looks up, tears and snot all over his face, mixed in with blood. 

“Thank you”.

The old man falls to the ground, shaking with sobs.